The film depicts astronauts Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise aboard Apollo 13 for America's third Moon landing mission. En route, an on-board explosion deprives their spacecraft of most of its oxygen supply and electric power, forcing NASA's flight controllers to abort the Moon landing, and turning the mission into a struggle to get the three men home safely.

Howard went to great lengths to create a technically accurate movie, employing NASA's technical assistance in astronaut and flight controller training for his cast, and even obtaining permission to film scenes aboard a reduced gravity aircraft for realistic depiction of the "weightlessness" experienced by the astronauts in space.

Released in the United States on June 30, 1995, Apollo 13 garnered critical acclaim and was nominated for many awards, including nine Academy Awards (winning for Best Film Editing and Best Sound).[3] In total, the film grossed over $355 million worldwide during its theatrical releases.

On July 20, 1969, veteran astronaut Jim Lovell hosts a party for other astronauts and their families, who watch on television as Neil Armstrong takes his first steps on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission. After the party, Lovell, who orbited the Moon on Apollo 8, tells his wife Marilyn that he intends to return to the Moon and walk on its surface.

On October 30, 1969, while giving a VIP tour of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, Lovell is informed by his boss Deke Slayton that he and his crew will fly the Apollo 13 mission instead of Apollo 14. Lovell, Ken Mattingly, and Fred Haise begin training for their new mission. Days before launch, it is discovered that Mattingly was exposed to measles, and the flight surgeon demands his replacement with Mattingly's backup, Jack Swigert, as a safety precaution. Lovell resists breaking up his team, but Slayton gives him the ultimatum of either being relieved of command and bumped to a later mission, or accepting a replacement. Lovell chooses the latter.

As the launch date approaches, Marilyn's fears for her husband's safety manifest in nightmares, but she goes to Cape Kennedy the night before launch, to see him off despite her misgivings.

Three days into the mission, the crew send a live television transmission from Odyssey, but the networks, believing the public now regards lunar missions as routine, decline to carry the broadcast live. Swigert is told to perform a standard housekeeping procedure of stirring the two liquid oxygen tanks in the Service Module. When he flips the switch, one tank explodes, emptying its contents into space and sending the craft tumbling. The other tank is soon found to be leaking, prompting Mission Control to abort the Moon landing, and forcing Lovell and Haise to hurriedly power up Aquarius as a "lifeboat" for the return home, while Swigert shuts down Odyssey before its battery power runs out. On Earth, Kranz rallies his team to do what is necessary to get the astronauts home safely, declaring "failure is not an option." Controller John Aaron recruits Mattingly to help him figure out how to restart Odyssey for the final return to Earth.

As Swigert and Haise watch the Moon passing beneath them, Lovell laments his lost chance of walking on its surface, then turns their attention to the task of getting home. With Aquarius running on minimum systems to conserve power, the crew is soon subjected to freezing conditions. Swigert suspects Mission Control is unable to get them home and is withholding this from them. In a fit of rage, Haise blames Swigert's inexperience for the accident; the ensuing argument is quickly squelched by Lovell. When the carbon dioxide exhaled by the astronauts reaches the Lunar Module's filter capacity and approaches dangerous levels, an engineering team quickly invents a way to make the Command Module's square filters work in the Lunar Module's round receptacles. With the guidance systems on Aquarius shut down, and despite Haise's fever and miserable living conditions, the crew succeeds in making a difficult but vital course correction by manually igniting the Lunar Module's engine.

Mattingly and Aaron struggle to find a way to power up the Command Module with its limited available power, but finally succeed and transmit the procedures to Swigert, who successfully restarts Odyssey by transmitting extra power from Aquarius. When the Service Module is jettisoned, the crew finally see the extent of the damage and prepare for re-entry, unsure whether Odyssey's heat shield is intact. If it is not, they will incinerate during re-entry. They release Aquarius and re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in Odyssey. After a tense, longer than normal period of radio silence due to ionization blackout, the astronauts report all is well and splash down in the Pacific Ocean. The three men are brought aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima.

As the astronauts are given a hero's welcome on deck, Lovell's narration describes the events that follow their return from space—including the investigation into the explosion, and the subsequent careers and lives of Haise, Swigert, Mattingly and Kranz—and ends with him wondering when mankind will return to the Moon.

Top to bottom: Hanks, Bacon and Paxton, who portray astronauts Lovell, Swigert and Haise respectively.

Tom Hanks as Apollo 13 Commander Jim Lovell. Jim Lovell stated that before the book was even written, the rights were being shopped to potential buyers[4] and that his first reaction was that actor Kevin Costner would be a good choice to play him.[5][6] However, by the time Howard acquired the director's position, Costner's name never came up in serious discussion, and Hanks had already been interested in doing a film based on Apollo 13. When Hanks' representative informed him that there was a script being passed around, he had the script sent to him.[4]John Travolta was initially offered the role of Lovell, but declined.[7]

Ed Harris as White Team Flight DirectorGene Kranz. Harris described the film as "cramming for a final exam." Harris described Gene Kranz as "corny and like a dinosaur", but was respected by the crew.[4]

The real Jim Lovell appears as captain of the recovery ship USS Iwo Jima; Howard had intended to make him an admiral, but Lovell himself, having retired as a Captain, chose to appear in his actual rank. Horror film director Roger Corman, a mentor of Howard, appears as a congressman being given a VIP tour by Lovell of the Vehicle Assembly Building, as it had become something of a tradition for Corman to make a cameo appearance in his protégés' films.[9][10] The real Marilyn Lovell appeared among the spectators during the launch sequence.[5] CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite appears in archive news footage and can be heard in newly recorded announcements, some of which he edited himself to sound more authentic.[5]

In addition to his brother, Clint Howard, several other members of Ron Howard's family appear in the movie:

While planning the film, director Ron Howard decided that every shot of the film would be original and that no mission footage would be used.[12] The spacecraft interiors were constructed by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center's Space Works, who also restored the Apollo 13Command Module. Two individual Lunar Modules and two Command Modules were constructed for filming. While each was a replica, composed of some of the original Apollo materials, they were built so that different sections were removable, which enabled filming to take place inside the capsules. Space Works also built modified Command and Lunar Modules for filming inside a Boeing KC-135reduced gravity aircraft, and the pressure suits worn by the actors, which are exact reproductions of those worn by the Apollo astronauts, right down to the detail of being airtight. When the actors put the suits on with their helmets locked in place, air was pumped into the suits to cool them down and allow them to breathe, exactly as in launch preparations for the real Apollo missions.[13]

The real Mission Control Center consisted of two control rooms located on the second and third floors of Building 30 at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NASA offered the use of the control room for filming but Howard declined, opting instead to make his own replica from scratch.[5][12] Production designer Michael Corenblith and set decorator Merideth Boswell were in charge of the construction of the Mission Control set at Universal Studios. The set was equipped with giant rear-screen projection capabilities and a complex set of computers with individual video feeds to all the flight controller stations. The actors playing the flight controllers were able to communicate with each other on a private audio loop.[13] The Mission Control room built for the film was on the ground floor.[12] One NASA employee who was a consultant for the film said that the set was so realistic that he would leave at the end of the day and look for the elevator before remembering he was not in Mission Control.[5] By the time the film was made, the USS Iwo Jima had been scrapped, so her sister ship, the USS New Orleans, was used as the recovery ship instead.[12]

"For actors, being able to actually shoot in zero gravity as opposed to being in incredibly painful and uncomfortable harnesses for special effects shots was all the difference between what would have been a horrible moviemaking experience as opposed to the completely glorious one that it actually was."

Howard anticipated difficulty in portraying weightlessness in a realistic manner. He discussed this with Steven Spielberg, who suggested using a KC-135 airplane, which can be flown in such a way as to create about 23 seconds of weightlessness, a method NASA has always used to train its astronauts for space flight. Howard obtained NASA's permission and assistance in filming in the realistic conditions aboard multiple KC-135 flights.[14]

The actors then traveled to Johnson Space Center in Houston where they flew in NASA's KC-135 reduced gravity aircraft to simulate weightlessness in outer space. While in the KC-135, filming took place in bursts of 25 seconds, the length of each period of weightlessness that the plane could produce. The filmmakers eventually flew 612 parabolas which added up to a total of three hours and 54 minutes of weightlessness. Parts of the Command Module, Lunar Module and the tunnel that connected them were built by production designer Michael Corenblith, art directors David J. Bomba and Bruce Alan Miller and their crew to fit inside the KC-135. Filming in such an environment, while never done before for a film, was a tremendous time saver. In the KC-135, the actors moved wherever they wanted, surrounded by floating props; the camera and cameraman were weightless so filming could take place on any axis from which a shot could be set up.[citation needed]

In Los Angeles, Ed Harris and all the actors portraying flight controllers enrolled in a Flight Controller School led by Gerry Griffin, an Apollo 13 flight director, and flight controller Jerry Bostick. The actors studied audiotapes from the mission, reviewed hundreds of pages of NASA transcripts and attended a crash course in physics.[12][13] Astronaut Dave Scott was impressed with their efforts, stating that each actor was determined to make every scene technically correct, word for word.[4]

The score to Apollo 13 was composed and conducted by James Horner. The soundtrack was released in 1995 by MCA Records and has seven tracks of score, eight period songs used in the film, and seven tracks of dialogue by the actors at a running time of nearly seventy-eight minutes. The music also features solos by vocalist Annie Lennox and Tim Morrison on the trumpet. The score was a critical success and garnered Horner an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score.[19]

The film was a box office success, gaining $355,237,933 worldwide.[2] The film's widest release was 2,347 theaters.[2] The film's opening weekend and the following two weeks placed it at #1 with a US gross of $25,353,380, which made up 14.7% of the total US gross.[2]

Apollo 13 received very positive reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that the film has an overall approval rating of 95% based on 81 reviews, with a weighted average score of 8.1/10.[21] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized 0–100 rating to reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 77 based on 22 reviews.[22]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised the film in his review saying: "A powerful story, one of the year's best films, told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and acted without pumped-up histrionics."[23]Richard Corliss from Time highly praised the film, saying: "From lift-off to splashdown, Apollo 13 gives one hell of a ride."[24] Edward Guthmann of San Francisco Chronicle gave a mixed review and wrote: "I just wish that Apollo 13 worked better as a movie, and that Howard's threshold for corn, mush and twinkly sentiment weren't so darn wide."[25]Peter Travers from Rolling Stone praised the film and wrote: "Howard lays off the manipulation to tell the true story of the near-fatal 1970 Apollo 13 mission in painstaking and lively detail. It's easily Howard's best film."[26] Movie Room Reviews said "This film is arguably one of the most dramatic and horrendous spaceflight stories ever told."[27]

Janet Maslin made the film an NYT Critics' Pick, calling it an "absolutely thrilling" film that "unfolds with perfect immediacy, drawing viewers into the nail-biting suspense of a spellbinding true story." According to Maslin, "like Quiz Show, Apollo 13 beautifully evokes recent history in ways that resonate strongly today. Cleverly nostalgic in its visual style (Rita Ryack's costumes are especially right), it harks back to movie making without phony heroics and to the strong spirit of community that enveloped the astronauts and their families. Amazingly, this film manages to seem refreshingly honest while still conforming to the three-act dramatic format of a standard Hollywood hit. It is far and away the best thing Mr. Howard has done (and Far and Away was one of the other kind)."[28] The academic critic Raymond Malewitz focuses on the DIY aspects of the "mailbox" filtration system to illustrate the emergence of an unlikely hero in late twentieth-century American culture—"the creative, improvisational, but restrained thinker—who replaces the older prodigal cowboy heroes of American mythology and provides the country a better, more frugal example of an appropriate 'husband'."[29]

Ron Howard stated that, after the first test preview of the film, one of the comment cards indicated "total disdain"; the audience member had written that it was a "typical Hollywood" ending and that the crew would never have survived.[30] Marilyn Lovell praised Quinlan's portrayal of her, stating she felt she could feel what Quinlan's character was going through, and remembered how she felt in her mind.[4]

The film depicts the crew hearing a bang quickly after Swigert followed directions from mission control to stir the oxygen and hydrogen tanks. In reality, the crew heard the bang 93 seconds later.[35]

The dialogue between ground control and the astronauts was taken nearly verbatim from transcripts and recordings, with the exception of one of the taglines of the film, "Houston, we have a problem." (This quote was voted #50 on the list "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes".) According to the mission transcript, the actual words uttered by Jack Swigert were "I believe we've had a problem here" (talking over Haise, who had started "Okay, Houston"). Ground control responded by saying "This is Houston, say again please." Jim Lovell then repeated, "Houston, we've had a problem."[36]

One other incorrect dialogue is after the re-entry blackout. In the movie, Tom Hanks (as Lovell) says "Hello Houston... this is Odyssey... it's good to see you again." In the actual re-entry, the Command Module was finally acquired by a Sikorsky SH-3D Sea King recovery aircraft which then relayed communications to Mission Control. Capcom and fellow astronaut Joe Kerwin (not Mattingly, who serves as Capcom in this scene in the movie) then made a call to the spacecraft "Odyssey, Houston standing by. Over." Jack Swigert, not Lovell, replied "Okay, Joe," and unlike in the movie, this was well before the parachutes deployed; the celebrations depicted at Mission Control were triggered by visual confirmation of their deployment.[37]

The tagline "Failure is not an option", stated in the film by Gene Kranz, also became very popular, but was not taken from the historical transcripts. The following story relates the origin of the phrase, from an e-mail by Apollo 13 Flight Dynamics Officer Jerry Bostick:

"As far as the expression 'Failure is not an option,' you are correct that Kranz never used that term. In preparation for the movie, the script writers, Al Reinart and Bill Broyles, came down to Clear Lake to interview me on 'What are the people in Mission Control really like?' One of their questions was 'Weren't there times when everybody, or at least a few people, just panicked?' My answer was 'No, when bad things happened, we just calmly laid out all the options, and failure was not one of them. We never panicked, and we never gave up on finding a solution.' I immediately sensed that Bill Broyles wanted to leave and assumed that he was bored with the interview. Only months later did I learn that when they got in their car to leave, he started screaming, 'That's it! That's the tag line for the whole movie, Failure is not an option. Now we just have to figure out who to have say it.' Of course, they gave it to the Kranz character, and the rest is history."[38]

"We were working and watching the controls during that time. Because we came in shallow, it took us longer coming through the atmosphere where we had ionization. And the other thing was that we were just slow in answering."

—Jim Lovell, on the real reason for the delay in replying after Apollo 13's four-minute re-entry into Earth's atmosphere[39]

In the film, Mattingly plays a key role in solving a power consumption problem that Apollo 13 was faced with as it approached re-entry. Lovell points out in his commentary that Mattingly was a composite of several astronauts and engineers—including Charles Duke (whose rubella led to Mattingly's grounding)—all of whom played a role in solving that problem.[5]

When Jack Swigert is getting ready to dock with the LM, a concerned NASA technician says: "If Swigert can't dock this thing, we don't have a mission." Lovell and Haise also seem worried. In his DVD commentary, the real Jim Lovell says that if Swigert had been unable to dock with the LM, he or Haise could have done it. He also says that Swigert was a well-trained Command Module pilot and that no one was really worried about whether he was up to the job,[39] but he admitted that it made a nice sub-plot for the film. What Lovell and Haise were really worried about was the rendezvous with Swigert as they left the Moon.[5]

A scene set the night before the launch, showing the astronauts' family members saying their goodbyes while separated by a road, to reduce the possibility of any last-minute transmission of disease, depicted a tradition not begun until the Space Shuttle program.[5]

The film depicts Marilyn Lovell dropping her wedding ring down a shower drain. According to Jim Lovell, this did occur,[39] but the drain trap caught the ring and his wife was able to retrieve it.[5] Lovell has also confirmed that the scene in which his wife had a nightmare about him being "sucked through an open door of a spacecraft into outer space" also occurred, though he believes the nightmare was prompted by her seeing a scene in Marooned, a 1969 film they saw three months before Apollo 13 blasted off.[39]

^The character in the film is a composite of protocol officer Bob McMurrey, who relayed the request for permission to erect a TV tower to Marilyn Lovell, and an unnamed OPA staffer who made the request on the phone, to whom she personally denied it as Quinlan did to "Henry" in the film. "Henry" is also seen performing other OPA functions, such as conducting a press conference. Kluger, Jeffrey; Jim Lovell (July 1995). Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 (First Pocket Books printing ed.). New York: Pocket Books. pp. 118, 209–210, 387. ISBN0-671-53464-5.